Introducing 3 of the artists on our free September 21 Peace Day broadcast

 For this Peace Day celebration, we have 7 participating artists representing different cultures and instrumental/vocal traditions, all performing a "musical prayer for peace among all peoples, cultures and faith traditions". Below, we share the brief stories about three of them:

Savita Pereira is a talented young composer, vocalist, pianist, arranger and conductor. She is the composer, arranger and video editor of the new song that you will hear in the September 21 concert - we'll catch a tiny taste of it as background music before the concert begins, and then enjoy the complete composition to close the entire concert. LFL founder Donna Stoering invited Savita to create a piece that would involve all of the instruments, vocal styles and performers on the program, and now this new "Savita's Song" will have its world premiere on Peace Day!                                                                                                               

Savita became a tech and graphics volunteer with LFL and the Notes for Nourishment concerts before she was even in high school! Now she is a double major in both Music (Composition) and Biomedical Engineering, at University of California at Davis. She loves serving as an arranger for the Video Game Orchestra there and is also the lead Music Director/conductor for the premiere South-Asian acappella team, Jhankaar, at UC Davis. Savita has been designing beautiful posters, flyers and social media posts for Notes for Nourishment concerts for many years now (including the one for this Peace Day concert), this is her first involvement in one of the actual concerts.    Social Media:  Savita Pereira on FB 

Faisal Zedan, a sought-after Middle Eastern percussionist, has performed on a variety of Notes for Nourishment concerts throughout the years, and he also performed with Donna Stoering and Naser Musa on a major Listen for Life concert in Carnegie Hall. Faisal was born in Lebanon and raised in southern Syria. He began learning the Derbakki drum at age 15 in his village Oum Dbaib. He first arrived in Southern California USA in December of 1991, and actually began studying Arabic music at that time.  Since then, Faisal has studied the many genres of Arabic music from different Arabic regions. In addition, he learned the different Middle Eastern, Greek, Armenian and Balkan styles and genres of music. He started teaching Arabic drums and music in 1996. Faisal has been an active member of the music community in the San Francisco Bay Area and also has a connection to other music communities in other countries. A popular educator, he teaches online master classes on percussion, he's on the  teaching staff at Middle Eastern music and dance camp in Mendocino, California and he teaches at Bahar Bayram music and dance camp in Brisbane, Australia. Faisal has now performed with many prominent musicians, singers and dancers throughout the U.S.and internationally. 

YouTube channel: faisal zedan percussion

Patreon page: faisal zedan

FaceBook page: faisal zedan 

Faraz Minooei, Iranian santur artist, has also performed many times with Listen for Life festivals and NFN concerts as well. Faraz as born in Tehran and began playing santur at the young age of nine. Faraz received his B.A. from San Francisco State University in 2008 as a Nagle Scholar and the first World/Jazz music major with santur as his primary instrument! As a full-time musician, Faraz is a performer, composer, and teacher. He views studying music as a never-ending mission. In view of that, he has also had the good fortune to study with masters such as M. R. Lotfi, H. Omoumi, Royal Hartigan, Hafez Modirzadeh, Michael Dessen, Kojiro Umezaki and Christopher Dobrian. 

Since 2006, he has lectured and performed at many universities including SFSU, UCI, UCLA, UCSC Stanford University and at the Society of Ethnomusicology. He is the founder of Echomerz Ensemble, and has performed with noted ensembles in the United Sates, among which was his collaboration in 2009 with Yo Yo Ma and Kayhan Kalhor in the Silk Road Ensemble (for the 50th anniversary of the Lincoln Center) and the collaboration as a composer and santur player with the film director Bahram Beyzaie for three plays of Jana & Baladour, Ardaviraf's Report, and Crossroads.

Recipient of numerous scholarships and grants, he earned his Masters of Fine Arts degree in music with emphasis in Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology from the University of California in Irvine. His thesis, "Abstracting" Iranian Classical Music, challenges the traditional practice of Iranian Classical Music to introduce innovative and transformative functions of the music in contemporary society.                                                                          Social Media:  https://www.instagram.com/faraz_minooei/            Website:  www.Farazminooei.com